By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER
Associated Press Writer

Photo of Bob Hope and Marty Lederhandler

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The echo was awful and it was dumping down rain high — real high — on a slippery hillside outside Danang. From where we sat the stage seemed about the size of a playing card, but none of it mattered.

"We got a 21-gun salute when we flew in here," Bob Hope quipped. "I think ten of them were ours."

The joke probably went back a war or two. That didn't matter either.

If I ever knew who the ladies at his side were, I have forgotten. I'm sure they were lovely. A friend who got much closer than we did assured us later that they were.

This was about November of 1968, fairly early in a relatively tame 13 month tour with the 11th Marines.

Each howitzer crew in our artillery battery could send two guys to the Hope show. The names, mine among them, were picked out of helmets.

It was wet, it was cold. Our leaky ponchos blew in the wind and the fuzzy sound system competed with planes coming in and out of the Danang airstrip not far away.

We Marines knew that what we were perceived to be doing in Vietnam made us pariahs among many back home. They didn't want us there any more than most of us wanted to be there, blowing away people with whom we had no real argument.

We sat in the mud transfixed by the miniature goings-on down the hill. Beer may have been involved.

Hope's humor savaged officers in general, military absurdities in particular. For the thousands of us perched on that hill, here was a guy who was really on our side.

It ended too soon, of course, and we gave him a standing ovation before we slid down the hill to the drab green trucks that hauled us back to reality.

We had to be there. He didn't, but he cared enough to come. Most of my time in that unhappy place is a blur now, 35 years later. Two or three days stand out in my memory.

That was one of them.